GPUs for the realtime low-level trigger of the NA62 experiment at CERN

Abstract

A pilot project for the use of GPUs (Graphics processing units) in online triggering ap- plications for high energy physics experiments (HEP) is presented. GPUs offer a highly parallel architecture and the fact that most of the chip resources are devoted to computa- tion. Moreover, they allow to achieve a large computing power using a limited amount of space and power. The application of online parallel computing on GPUs is shown for the synchronous low level trigger of NA62 experiment at CERN. Direct GPU communication using a FPGA-based board has been exploited to reduce the data transmission latency and results on a first field test at CERN will be highlighted. This work is part of a wider project named GAP (GPU application project), intended to study the use of GPUs in real-time applications in both HEP and medical imagin